Column

In principle I have a problem empathising with a heroine whose sole aim in life is to win a dance reality show. It didn’t work even when Rani Mukerji displayed such chutzpah in Bunty Aur Babli running away from home for a modelling contest. Add to that, the girl in question (Preeti Desai) is neither a dancer nor an actress. She’s first and above all a London-bred model with a thick accent, dazzling hair and tall, thin legs. Read more

Dear Papa, I am writing to you from my new home in the mountains where the air is so fresh, the water so clean, the sheep so adorable and the women in ethnic costumes so trendy! I now live in a mud house with cute little square windows and have even learnt to make tea on the chulha, sweep the floor and make my own bed. Of course, when it's warmer I sleep on the green grass and gaze at the stars shining bright in the ink blue sky. Read more

In Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine Cate Blanchett plays a down-and-out former heiress surviving on a staple diet of vodka, Xanax, rage and self-pity. She talks to herself and is rude to everyone in sight. But the character's vulnerability cuts deep and as you loathe her selfishness you also feel terribly sorry for her. Read more

Makar Sankranti, the harvest festival of India, is celebrated on January 14 every year and is marked by people in Maharashtra exchanging tilguls (sesame laddoos) as a gesture of goodwill. This Makar Sankranti, try making sesame cookies instead of or alongside tilguls. Read more

It would be easy to dismiss Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Bullett Rajaas a lazy studio-funded collaboration between a reasonably talented director-star duo. Sadly, it doesn’t seem a mere aberration. More likely Dhulia and Saif Ali Khan have run out of ideas and are desperate to cash in their chips. Worth noting here that the filmmaker’s best work, Paan Singh Tomar(2010), came at the end of a seven-year drought. Read more

When you walk into a Sanjay Leela Bhansali film you have to leave your inhibitions at the door. The guy expects unconditional surrender to his grandiose vision, wound up characters, over-wrought emotions, and operatic sets and costumes. You can’t do Bhansali without a million candles, humungous chandeliers, wall-to-wall murals, orgiastic colours, picture-perfect lighting and people who scream their feelings out and wring each other’s necks in love. Read more

First the good news. Krrish 3has by far the best special effects one has seen in an Indian film; Dhoom 3 better pack enough fire-power to outdo the mind-boggling wizardry of chameleons morphing into human forms, gravity-defying spins through Mumbai's streets and a couple of breathtaking action sequences. Not to mention the villain’s den atop a Swiss mountain that James Bond would’ve been proud to decimate. Read more

Ritesh Batra's The Lunchbox opens with a crisscross of overhead wires that keep Mumbai's lifeline––its local trains––running. Tracks intersect, seemingly randomly, taking people to their familiar destinations. Read more

"Marriage is a wonderful institution. But who wants to live in an institution?" Groucho Marx famously declared. The characters in Maneesh Sharma's Shuddh Desi Romance might agree with this pronouncement. Read more